My Full Make.com Blueprint For Automating a Sheets → OpenAI → Ghost Content Pipeline
I wired my entire content pipeline into Make.com so a single row in Google Sheets turns into a published Ghost post. Here is the exact scenario, module by module.
Tags
AI
The Hour I Lost to a Plausible AI Debugging Answer
A confident AI diagnosis of a React Native hydration issue sent me refactoring the wrong layer for 45 minutes. The real bug was a string "null" in the API.
What My Automated Archive Exposed About My Writing
Reading a batch of AI-written posts in my Ghost archive made the patterns obvious: recycled transitions, invented habits, generic intros, fake closure, and why even a few real notes change the result.
Where Cursor Stops and My Judgment Begins
Cursor is very good at filling in the boring middle. Recent client work showed exactly where that stops, and where experience still has to say no.
Whoop + AI: How I Predict My Recovery Windows Before I Burn Out
I wired my Whoop data into an AI pipeline that predicts my recovery windows before I feel tired. It changed how I schedule training, deep work, and rest.
Ethics Of AI In Frontend: Who Owns Your UI Components?
I have AI generate UI components almost every day now, but I do not trust any of them by default. This is how I think about responsibility and ethics when that code hits production.
CSS
Why I Still Hand‑Code Every Hover State
I still hand-code every hover state instead of trusting component libraries. Not because I like pain, but because that tiny interaction layer decides how the site actually feels.
The CSS Specificity Bug That Wasted 3 Hours And Needed 1 Line
A real CSS specificity war story from a client project: three hours of confusion, one stubborn layout bug, and a single-line fix that solved it.
CSS Variables in the Age of AI: Letting Models Design Your Themes
I stopped hand-tuning every color token and let AI generate theme palettes on top of CSS variables. The result: faster theming, fewer regressions, and weirder experiments.
CSS Flexbox For Adaptive Fitness Dashboards That Don’t Suck On Mobile
How I use Flexbox to keep a workout dashboard readable when the data gets weird and the layout has to adapt on the fly. Practical patterns from a real fitness tracking UI.
Using CSS Variables To Theme Biohacking Dashboards Without Losing Your Mind
How I use CSS variables to keep my HRV, sleep, and training dashboards visually consistent, even when the tools do everything in their power to look different.
Animating Sleep Cycle Data With CSS: Turning Rest Into Motion
I turned boring sleep tracking exports into an animated CSS timeline that makes light, deep and REM stages instantly readable. No chart library, just HTML, CSS, and some carefully timed motion.
Frontend
My Full Make.com Blueprint For Automating a Sheets → OpenAI → Ghost Content Pipeline
I wired my entire content pipeline into Make.com so a single row in Google Sheets turns into a published Ghost post. Here is the exact scenario, module by module.
Why I Prototype Motion Before Polishing Layout
Static layouts can look perfect and still refuse to move. By prototyping motion early, spacing, hierarchy and components evolve around how the interface actually behaves.
The Hour I Lost to a Plausible AI Debugging Answer
A confident AI diagnosis of a React Native hydration issue sent me refactoring the wrong layer for 45 minutes. The real bug was a string "null" in the API.
The frontend code I deliberately keep boring
One feature taught me that a neat React state machine was less valuable than three plain useState hooks, and it changed how I choose boring frontend code.
When smooth animations make a fast site feel slow
A site can be technically fast and still feel slow if your animations sit between intent and feedback. These are the ones I shortened, simplified, or removed after watching real users.
Where Cursor Stops and My Judgment Begins
Cursor is very good at filling in the boring middle. Recent client work showed exactly where that stops, and where experience still has to say no.
Productivity
The Most Productive 15 Minutes Of My Day: Folding Laundry At Night
My most useful daily habit is not an app, a supplement, or a new framework. It is folding laundry at night, on purpose, every single day.
Killing CalendarBridge and RankPill: An Honest Audit of My Setapp Stack
I killed CalendarBridge and RankPill, then audited my entire Setapp stack. This is how I trimmed the bloat without losing any real capability.
Running Family Logistics Like a Sprint Board in a WhatsApp Group
My partner and I run family logistics like a sprint, but our board lives in WhatsApp. No fancy app, no Notion setup. Just one group called “Fam” with a few simple rules.
My Sunday Planning Ritual: Why I Plan On Paper Instead Of Apps
My entire week lives or dies on a 30–40 minute Sunday planning ritual done on paper. The friction is exactly why it works.
Productivity Hacking With AI: How I Let a Model Reorder My To‑Do List
I stopped manually grooming my to-do list and let a model reorder it using my own data. Here is how that actually works day to day, and what broke.
How I Actually Time Block a Week Without Burning Out
I tried to engineer the perfect calendar. Then I watched it get wrecked by reality every single week. This is the version of time blocking that actually survives contact.
Biohacking
A Month of Ignoring Daily Body-Fat Numbers
I hid the body-fat tile on my smart scale for 30 days and watched only a 7-day rolling weight average. The results were calmer mornings and steadier habits, not worse progress.
The boring training week I can actually repeat
My training week is aggressively boring: a fixed 20-minute kettlebell session, rec softball as a social anchor, wildcard days that can be nothing, and recovery as the actual plan.
The metric I stopped letting ruin my morning
For months my HRV score decided if I was allowed to feel competent that day. A 90-day experiment changed it from a verdict into one quiet input among many.
The health dashboard I check less now
My health dashboard went from decision tool to confirmation ritual. Once I stripped it back to a few blunt metrics, the excuses disappeared and the habits improved.
The Morning a Yellow Recovery Score Overruled Me
One yellow 43% recovery score forced me to cancel squats, move a session, and change how I schedule training. That weekend turned HRV data into a traffic-light rule set.
Why I Switched from Whoop Back to Apple Watch
Whoop gave me beautiful recovery scores, but kept my best insights locked in its own app. Apple Watch is dumber and messier, but it fits my actual life and tools.
Tools
The client code I will not paste into an AI tool
A practical line between “helpful AI code review” and “leaking your client’s business model,” based on operational privacy rather than legal fine print.
The Schema.org Markup Every Client Site Should Ship With
The structured data I ship on almost every client project fits on a single page. This is the JSON-LD I actually deploy, not theory.
Shooting With Restraint: iPhone, Lightroom, And A Component Mindset
Photography got way better for me when I dropped the gear chase and treated images like components in a system: shot on an iPhone, finished in Lightroom, used on the web.
Killing CalendarBridge and RankPill: An Honest Audit of My Setapp Stack
I killed CalendarBridge and RankPill, then audited my entire Setapp stack. This is how I trimmed the bloat without losing any real capability.
The Tower Workflow That Keeps My Mac Studio And MacBook Air Perfectly In Sync
How I keep a Mac Studio and a MacBook Air in sync using Tower, Git and a few strict rules, so I can jump between desk and couch without merge hell.
Mac Studio As My Daily AI Workhorse (And How I Actually Use The GPU)
How I use a Mac Studio as a daily AI development box, where Apple Silicon shines for AI workloads, and how to avoid the usual GPU bottlenecks.
Build in Public
20 Years of richardlemon.com – A Website Grows Up
What the Wayback Machine remembers about you – and what it says about where you're going.
Lazy Loading Images Almost Tanked My Core Web Vitals
I broke my own Core Web Vitals by being clever with lazy loading. Here is the ugly LCP data, what actually fixed it, and the image loading rules I use now.
The Accessibility Audit That Slapped Me Awake
An external accessibility audit tore apart a client site I was proud of. Here is what they caught that I completely missed, and how it changed my workflow.
The Git hygiene workflow keeping ideebv-2026 lean
How I keep the ideebv-2026 repo lean using git filter-repo, strict ignores, and backup pruning. Real commands, no theory.
The CSS Specificity Bug That Wasted 3 Hours And Needed 1 Line
A real CSS specificity war story from a client project: three hours of confusion, one stubborn layout bug, and a single-line fix that solved it.
Why I Rebuilt My Portfolio Navigation From Scratch (Twice)
I thought my portfolio nav was smart. Then I used it on an actual phone. This is what broke, what I rebuilt, and what I will never ship again without testing.
Thoughts
20 Years of richardlemon.com – A Website Grows Up
What the Wayback Machine remembers about you – and what it says about where you're going.
A New Chapter: Biohacking My Way to a Healthier Me
As the year ends, I’m excited to share the beginning of my weight loss journey—a journey I’m
What I Write Down During a Youth Baseball Game
During youth baseball games, I let the app track the score and use my notebook for the human data: faces, failed drills, invisible players, and one actionable line per kid.
Fluent emptiness and the missing Tuesday morning
A draft about my Withings scale sounded polished and personal, but it was fluent emptiness. Here is how I now spot that pattern and push writing back to real detail.
What My Automated Archive Exposed About My Writing
Reading a batch of AI-written posts in my Ghost archive made the patterns obvious: recycled transitions, invented habits, generic intros, fake closure, and why even a few real notes change the result.
I Would Rather Publish 600 Useful Words
Fixed word counts made my writing longer, not better. I stopped aiming for 1,000+ words and started cutting until it hurt. The result: denser posts, better trust.